World News - Alito Defended Officials From Wiretap Suits Memos From Alito's Work in the Reagan Administration Illustrate an Incremental Legal Strategy

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito defended the right of government officials to order domestic wiretaps for national security when he worked at the Reagan Justice Department, an echo of President Bush's rationale for spying on U.S. residents in the war on terror. Then an assistant to the solicitor general, Alito wrote a 1984 memo that provided insights on his views of government powers and legal recourse seen now through the prism of Bush's actions as well as clues to the judge's understanding of how the Supreme Court operates. The National Archives released the memo and scores of other documents related to Alito on Friday; the Associated Press had requested the material under the Freedom of Information Act. The memo comes as Bush is under fire for secretly ordering domestic spying of suspected terrorists without a warrant.... http://abcnews.go.com

A Japanese whaling fleet is trying to escape Greenpeace protesters in remote icy waters near Antarctica, the environmental group said.Two Greenpeace ships, which tracked down the Japanese fleet on Thursday after a month-long search, have been deploying inflatable boats to harass Japanese "catcher boats," positioning them between the whales and harpoon gun. But Greenpeace said the Japanese fleet was now on the run. "Every hour that the fleet is on the run, more whales will live," Greenpeace's expedition leader in the Southern Ocean, Shane Rattenbury, said in a statement. In Australia, a likely confrontation between Greenpeace activists and one of the whaling ships was averted on Saturday. The whaling ship had been due to deliver a sick crew member to hospital in the southern city of Hobart but the man was airlifted from the vessel instead. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1438575

The FBI has been covertly monitoring mosques and Muslim homes and businesses in U.S. cities for abnormal radiation levels since 2002, several government officials confirmed Friday.One government official said the authorities don't obtain warrants because the testing is conducted from outside the buildings on what they consider public property. An official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that none of the FBI's programs target gathering places of any specific segment of the population and that non-Muslim sites were also monitored for radiation.A Muslim advocacy group has said that the program is "misguided" and targets "the wrong people.""It is a waste of time, it is a waste of resources and it is causing us to be concerned about our citizenship, our constitutional rights," Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told CNN....http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/23/nuke.monitoring/index.html?section=cnn_us

Russian lawmakers opened the way Friday for a law to control activist groups and other non-governmental organizations, a measure that opponents say threatens the survival of human rights workers and others considered disloyal by the Kremlin. The State Duma, parliament's lower house, voted 357-20 to pass the bill on the third of three required readings. The upper house is expected to approve the legislation early next week before President Vladimir Putin signs it into law. Putin ordered lawmakers to water down the measure after strong protests from Russian and foreign NGOs as well as from Western governments. The changes included dropping a requirement for foreign groups to re-register their Russia branches as local entities, which will be subject to stricter controls. But the country's leading human rights body, Memorial, and other groups warned that the bill remained draconian and could force them to close. ...http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-12-23-russia-activists_x.htm?csp=34

It tore through Aceh, Indonesia, with the force of an atomic bomb, obliterated hundreds of coastal villages in Sri Lanka and India, and smashed through luxury hotels in the beach resorts of Thailand. The amount of death and destruction was almost unimaginable, and it spawned an unprecedented outpouring of humanitarian aid and record donations for relief and reconstruction. But one year later, recovery in the Southeast Asia tsunami zone has fallen far short of expectations. A frustrated Umi Kaosum — who lost family, friends, her home, her entire village in Aceh — knows about all the money that was donated. So why doesn't she have a home yet? ...http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Tsunami/story?id=1437670&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane with 23 people aboard crashed on the Caspian Sea coast and all aboard were believed killed, a police official said early Saturday. The police duty officer in the Sabunchi region north of the capital, Baku, said the wreckage was found along the shore. He declined to give his name because he was not authorized to act as a spokesman. The plane was identified as an An-140, a twin-engine turboprop. It did not hit near any buildings, an official from the Baku transport police was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti news agency. ...http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-12-23-azerbaijan-plane-crash_x.htm?csp=34